At least this one will have online. I remember the bait-and-switch with the first game when they said they'd add that mode in if it sold a certain amount, and when it did they were all "lol nope can't be done".

Mafro wrote:At least this one will have online. I remember the bait-and-switch with the first game when they said they'd add that mode in if it sold a certain amount, and when it did they were all "lol nope can't be done".

"The next installment in the critically acclaimed “State of Decay” franchise immerses you in an all-new, multiplayer zombie survival fantasy. Build a lasting community, working with other players or solo to overcome challenges while exploring your own unique story in a world that remembers the choices you make. "

State of Decay 2: A New Zombie Survival Fantasy Comes Alive in 2017

For the past two years, our team at Undead Labs has been building something truly special for our passionate State of Decay fans and zombie survival enthusiasts worldwide. Today, we’re thrilled to finally break our silence – State of Decay 2 is coming to Xbox One and Windows 10 PC as a retail and digital title in 2017!

State of Decay 2 is a full sequel with much higher ambitions than the original. We’re creating the game our passionate fans have asked for – a bigger, badder, bolder, smoother State of Decay that they can play with their friends.

State of Decay 2 builds upon the unique blend of open-world exploration, third-person action, and survival-fantasy role playing pioneered in the original State of Decay, and adds the top fan-requested feature – cooperative multiplayer. The world of State of Decay 2 is more dangerous and unpredictable than ever, so if you choose, you can work closely with up to three other players to build lasting communities and put your survival plan to the test. As with the original hit game, your choices will shape an interconnected world and form a unique experience every time you play.

Alone or with friends, dynamic game systems for character progression, base-building, leadership promotion, and consequence-driven storytelling will result in a dramatic experience that tests your will to survive. And throughout the game, you’ll explore a visually stunning and richly detailed world, brought to life with Unreal Engine 4.

As an Xbox Play Anywhere title, one purchase will get you both the Xbox One and Windows 10 PC versions of the game. And with Xbox Live and cloud save support, your Achievements and progress sync between devices, so you can switch between them and retain your community and progress in the game.

Check out the trailer above for a sneak peek at what’s in store. We’ll be releasing more details as soon as we can, so stay tuned to Xbox Wire and StateofDecay.com.

STATE OF DECAY 2 PLAY AREA 'SUBSTANTIALLY LARGER' THAN FIRST GAME – IGN FIRST

First, Strain confirmed our assumption that State of Decay 2 would be in a new, bigger town than the first game, adding, "I know SoD fans are hungry for details on number and size of maps, regions, kilometers of playable area, etc, but we’re not quite ready for that. For now, suffice it to say that the playable area is substantially larger than State of Decay."

"The millions of State of Decay players have been clear about what they want in State of Decay 2: A bigger, better State of Decay they can play with their friends," he said. "We intend to deliver on all of those."

Speaking of friends, we asked Foge if your friends could suddenly decide to be un-friendly, considering the fact that State of Decay is all about managing your relationships with your fellow survivors.

“The primary goal for multiplayer is that other players bring an interesting new dynamic to the simulation," Foge said. "The heart of State of Decay is consequences, and we need to make sure that other players are more than just an awesome addition to moment-to-moment gameplay; they need to become a part of the story based on the agency they have in your world.

“Your guests cannot just say ‘screw it, I'm taking this to PvP-town!’ and directly attack you or any of your community members, because State of Decay 2 isn't a PvP game. They can't go into your base and tear down all of your facilities. But there are plenty of ways that they can be a hostile force in your world because they can directly affect the simulation in meaningful ways.

In one of the new concept images, we see a player arriving by car, apparently separate from the other three players in the same image. This hints that players might be able to go their separate ways and then reconvene. So we asked Strain, How closely are players going to be encouraged to stick together?

"We want it to be fun to play with your friends, so the design mechanics encourage teamwork and cooperation," he told us. "That said, 'encouraging' is not the same as 'forcing.' You will be free to get in a car and go anywhere you like, just as you would if you were playing by yourself."

"There may be times when it’s tactically advantageous to do so," he continued. "For example, you may be under the gun to get medical supplies back to your base, and you decide to split up and have two players scavenge the supermarket pharmacy while two others go scout for a car or SUV with a large amount of trunk space to get the goods home. Or you could even be working on completely separate objectives and only come together as needed to get each other out of a tight spot. Ultimately you’ll be more effective (and, if we do our jobs well, you’ll have a lot more fun) playing close together, but as always with State of Decay, your play style is up to you."

Finally, we asked Strain about the move away from the first game's CryEngine-based technology to State of Decay 2's Unreal Engine 4 underpinnings. What does it mean for players?

"The most visible benefit will be visual," he answered. "For the requirements of State of Decay 2, [Unreal Engine 4] gives us the tools and tech we need to create higher resolution environments and characters with more sophisticated lighting, shaders, and effects. Our art director Doug calls the artistic style for State of Decay 'Faded Americana', and one of the key aspects of that is a painterly style and color palette reminiscent of the old Kodak Ektachrome film. UE4 gives us the tools to get closer to realizing that style on your screen.

"Beyond that, the biggest benefit is simply efficiency in creating content. UE4 has sophisticated tools, such as Blueprint, that support rapid prototyping and feature development. That makes it far easier for us to add new content and features to the game, both before and after release."

So the devs Undead Labs tweeted that this is a full price AAA game and they are travelling to E3 this year to unveil it fully (they haven't been to E3 for years). Not sure what to make of this.

Some New Details:-Coming to Xbox One and Windows 10 as an Xbox Play Anywhere game

- There is no singular hero character. Play as an entire community — each survivor in the game is their own person, with a unique mix of background traits, skills, and attitudes that determine what they can do, what they want, and what they are willing to do to get it.

- Use your community’s unique array of individuals to forge a path through the game that is personal to you. Your choices shape the identity of your community, ensuring that no two stories are alike.

-Explore an open, simulated world filled with dynamic zombie and human enemies, friendly survivors to recruit into your community, and valuable resources and gear necessary to keep your people alive.

-Play solo, or for the first time ever in the “State of Decay” franchise, with up to three of your friends.

-Invite friends to join your game, or drop into theirs. Work together as you explore the deadly post-apocalyptic environment, watching each other’s backs and sharing the rewards of your accomplishments.

-Each player maintains command of their own personal community and roster of characters.

Undead Labs CEO Jeff Strain shares more details on the Xbox One and PC zombie game.

State of Decay 2 launches this year on Xbox One and PC. It is an Xbox Play Anywhere title, so buying it digitally on one platform provides access on the other at no extra cost. All progress, including save data and achievements, moves between platforms.

GameSpot: Are there any particular lessons that you took away from the first State of Decay that you were looking to improve upon?

Jeff Strain: Oh yeah... When we started working on State of Decay 2, we sat down and put everything into three buckets. We had [to think about] what are things that work well the players loved that we're gonna double down on, what are things that we want to innovate on and bring new things to it, and then what are things that didn't work well that we either need to completely overhaul or ax? Of those, the offline progression system was by far the most...the feature that players were most ready to see go, because the thing about State of Decay is, it's permanent.

The way that works is we have a contract with players, and that contract is: "If you die, it's your fault." It's not the game throwing some random thing at you. You have all the tools at your disposal to see the threat, to make your own decisions, and if you die, we want you coming away from it thinking, "Ah, if only I'd done X or Y!" Or, "Here's where I made the mistake or stayed out too long." The offline progression system kind of broke that, because that stuff could happen while you were logged out of the game. It violated the contract, and it didn't work well. That was probably the biggest area that we had to address.

Have there been any games that have come out since State of Decay that you've looked to for inspiration for this one?

You know, inspiration for us is always the really well done, big, open-world games. Red Dead Redemption, the GTAs--those games do a phenomenal job of making you feel like you're in a world that's believable and real. Beyond that, we've actually been a little bit surprised that this genre we've built, this survival fantasy genre, is still very much home for State of Decay. There's no other games that really bring that blend of role playing elements, third-person action, and the simulated world and community-based character development. Lots of inspiration, yes, but we're also very happy that we still feel like the State of Decay experience is fairly unique within the industry.

With co-op, what does the game do to balance or compensate if you're playing four players versus just one or two? Does how many players you have affect how tough enemies are, anything like that?

You know, there's not, and that's very much intentional. The thing about State of Decay is that, and State of Decay 2 in particular, it's a game of entropy. We're modeling a real world. Resources are finite, your stamina is finite, gasoline is finite. All of the resources are finite. If you have friends playing with you, that should be a bonus. You should be able to get farther and do more in a similar amount of time. We don't want to just automatically up the zombie density or adjust things so that you feel like, in terms of how much progress you're making or what you're able to do that, it just all balances out in the end.

Playing with your friends should be more fun, and you should be able to do more things. All of those entropy rules are still there. Eventually, mistakes will still be just as costly, and now you have more people to possibly make mistakes.

And it's still entirely cooperative--there's no adversarial type of multiplayer mode?

That's right. As far as the multiplayer component, it is very joyfully cooperative multiplayer.

I remember hearing previously that, if you wanted to screw with your friends, you could try to attract zombies or things like that. You could, in a way, grief your friends.

You can playfully grief each other yes. Can you line up and make a headshot on your friends? No, it's just not that kind of game. There are some great games out there that really focus on that hardcore PVP experience, but that's not what State of Decay's about.

What's been the most challenging aspect in development? Has it been incorporating multiplayer, or is there something else that's been really challenging?

The challenging aspect of development is, because the game is so strictly simulated, we work very hard to make sure that nothing is deterministic--that there's no tripwires, there's no trigger sequences. All of the behaviors in the world are modeled for both the zombies and the NPCs that inhabit your community. There's 14 to 20 different interlocking systems that contribute to all this. For AI behaviors and world conditions, those all have to be perfectly in sync in order for the experience to feel believable and right. Constantly tuning all those knobs so that everything is working well is a real challenge.

How big is the development team on this game versus the first one?

It's about four times as large.

On the same note, do you have an estimate or rough idea of how much bigger this world is than the first one?

We'll be talking more in detail about that, but you can bet that it's still to scale, the size of the development team will give you a feel for probably how much larger things are

Do the multiplayer aspects at all draw in what you had done with the Class4 MMO that you were working on previously, or does that not carry over at all?

This is not Class4 as it was originally envisioned. That was to be more of an MMO type of experience. What happened was that State of Decay did really well. Over five million people have played it at this point, which far exceeded our wildest hopes, dreams. What we did when we started on State of Decay 2 was we were like, "Okay, let's do Class4." We took a step back and really looked at what people were asking for. People were not asking for a completely different type of game. What they were asking for was, "We want it bigger, we want it more polished, and we want to play with our friends." That is literally 95% of all the feedback we got on the game. At some point we just decided, "Hey, you know what? Crazy idea. We should probably just build the game that people are asking for." That was the design genesis for State of Decay 2

Has Project Scorpio support something that you have in mind, or is that not gonna come until later?

[PR person] It's something we'll talk about at E3.

You've been doing the concept art releases over the last few weeks. Is there anything else that you're gonna do between now and E3?

We'll continue that. We didn't start that stream in order to just dry it up. We will be releasing selective tidbits about the game and pieces of information like that just so that people can see that it's coming and get excited about it. I think that it's fair to say that at E3 there'll be a lot more information.

Is it still coming to PC in addition to Xbox?

Yeah, it'll be on Windows 10 and Xbox One. That's what we're talking about today. It will support the Play Anywhere initiative: buy once, play on either platform, and players on both platforms can play with each other.

With a name like Undead Labs, you would safely assume that you're probably going to make more zombies games in the future. Do you see yourself branching out at all in terms of either genre or theme, going beyond zombies? Is it just kind of the identity of the studio?

When we formed the studio we had State of Decay on mind. I would say that our gig is survival fantasy. That's what makes State of Decay unique. It's not zombies; it's survival fantasy. I think that future projects would probably play into that theme. But no, it's not necessarily always gonna be zombies.